‘I am Europe’: Experiences of Multiple Belonging
Keywords:
Multiple belonging, transcultural mobility, European identification, transnationalism, cultural borderland, mobile mindsetAbstract
The paper addresses the issue of multiple belonging and transnational identification for people who have parents of different nationalities and who grew up in multilingual families outside their parents’ countries of origin. Transnational bonds are commonly associated with movement that affects individuals’ self-assertion of status and sense of belonging. Although the study’s participants have not necessarily experienced mobility during their childhood, they relate to a persistent experience of otherness in their social relationships, which makes it impossible for them to identify with only a single or dominant cultural, ethnic and national background. Instead they show a preference for identifying as Europeans and their identification with Europe has become part of a self-chosen reality. The paper discusses various functions of their sense of European-ness that relate to different aspects of possessing multiple cultural attachments. I propose that the participants’ intertwined work of constructing belonging and identification is situated in an everyday experience of ‘cultural borderland’ and associated with a ‘mobile mindset’. The participants engage in intercultural processes across and within specific boundaries by using notions of difference as a means of creating a tolerant and inclusive sense of communality across national borders, which is not exclusively restricted to Europe.
